ScreeningAs Above So Below and Short Films

As Above, So Below
Dir. Larry Clark. 1973, 52 mins. 16mm. With Nathaniel Taylor, Lyvonne Walder, Billy Middleton. A rediscovered masterpiece, Clark’s As Above, So Below offers a powerful political and social critique in its portrayal of Black insurgency. The film opens in 1945 with a young boy playing in his Chicago neighborhood, and then follows the adult Jita-Hadi (Taylor) as a returning Marine with heightened political consciousness. Like The Spook Who Sat By the Door, it imagines a post–Watts Rebellion state of siege and an organized Black underground plotting revolution.

Preceded by:
Medea
Dir. Ben Caldwell. 1973, 7 mins. Digital projection. Made on an animation stand and edited entirely in the camera, Medea combines live action and rapidly edited still images of Africans and African Americans that function like flashes of history the unborn child will inherit.

Ujamii Uhuru Schule Community Freedom School
Dir. Don Amis. 1974, 9 mins. Digital projection. A day-in-the-life portrait of an Afrocentric primary learning academy located in South L.A. that focuses on the virtues of the three Rs—Respect, Righteousness, and Revolution.

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